Networking as an Underrepresented Person

Allie Nimmons:
Welcome to the Underrepresented In Tech Podcast, hosted by Michelle Frechette and Allie Nimmons. Underrepresented in Tech is a free database, but with the goal of helping people find new opportunities in WordPress and tech overall.

Michelle Frechette:
Hi, Allie.

Allie Nimmons:
Hi, Michelle.

Michelle Frechette:
How are you?

Allie Nimmons:
I am great. Got my coffee. Got my friend. All I need.

Michelle Frechette:
Fantastic. I love that we still… We always talk to each other like, “Hi, Allie.” “Hi, Michelle.” We haven’t just spent five minutes saying, “Okay, what are we talking about in this episode?”

Allie Nimmons:
Yeah. We have to create an experience, an ambiance for our listeners.

Michelle Frechette:
Right. We have a culture to our podcast, and I love that about us.

Allie Nimmons:
It sounds good.

Michelle Frechette:
And I’m excited. So I don’t know that everybody knows this yet, but I’ve been writing for Post Status on two different counts. One is on underrepresented things and that’s an every other week column that I’m putting out there. And the other is on getting hired or doing hiring. So it’s around HR and things like that. As far as recruiting, how to be recruited, how to do recruiting, that kind of stuff. And so, I love that the work we’re doing here plays into that and I can tag things back and forth. And so the post I put out this week was about the getting hired and it really pairs well with what we do in Underrepresented as well because it’s about networking. My mouth’s not working today. Specifically, this blog post was about networking at online conferences, but I just kind of want to talk about networking in general as somebody who’s in an underrepresented community.
So for example, the first time I ever went to a meetup, I was invited to the meetup. I was running late. I literally walked into a semi darkened room because they were using video projection, right? Of all men, not a single woman there, and they were having a conversation about DigitalOcean. I had put together exactly two websites. I didn’t even know what I was doing yet. DigitalOcean was way over my head. They did this thing called inspect element, which now I do all the time. But at the time, it was blowing my mind. I’m like, “How do you even get there?” Right. So here I am a newbie in WordPress walking into what should be a very welcoming environment as the only woman in the room with a bunch of guys in a dark room. And feeling in over my head from the beginning.
So to say that wasn’t a welcoming experience is a very big understatement. And it wasn’t because the gentleman in the room didn’t want women there. It wasn’t that they were trying to create a hostile environment. It’s just that I happen to walk in on one of those days when they’re doing deep stuff and no other woman happened to show up. It’s different now because I run the local meet up now and I make sure it’s open to everybody and we don’t meet in dark rooms. And anyway, so that’s another thing. But it really makes you think a lot about how you can ingratiate yourself… Is that the right word? Insert yourself into conversations, how you can do networking at a conference.
It’s different than joining a networking group where everybody goes around the table, introduce themselves, and “I’m a podcaster. I’m a web designer,” whatever. Because when you’re at a WordCamp US in person, there’s these big circles of people who are just talking. And if you were going by yourself… The first time I ever went to WordCamp US, I went by myself. I knew a couple people, but I literally wasn’t going to puppy dog after them all day like “Pick me and you show me all your friends.” Which I’m sure they would’ve been fine with, but I made friends that week, and really started to grow my network by putting myself out there, sitting next to people… This is going to come as a giant shock to a lot of people, I have introverted tendencies. I know.

Allie Nimmons:
Impossible.

Michelle Frechette:
I know, because I don’t really display them very often. But when I am out of my element and I don’t know anybody else, it’s harder for me to just pop myself down next to somebody new and go, “Hey, I’m Michelle. Who are you?”

Allie Nimmons:
Yeah.

Michelle Frechette:
But I did, at that time, I put myself out of my comfort zone. I introduced myself to people, I followed people on Twitter. I literally had like 20 tweets to my name at that point in time. And now people are like, “You do that a day, Michelle.” “I know. I know.” I know I’m just kind of going on and on here.

Allie Nimmons:
No.

Michelle Frechette:
But the point is it’s not easy when you aren’t one of the white, bro, dude, guys who is at the top of the pyramid in WordPress to put yourself into that situation.

Allie Nimmons:
Yeah, I totally agree.

Michelle Frechette:
I’m going to pause now so you can reply.

Allie Nimmons:
I totally agree. And I’ve learned so much in the last three or four years about networking as a term and as a concept. And I think that it has this… There’s kind of two kinds of networking in my mind, there’s networking at a networking event where everyone’s handing out business cards and everyone knows that they’re there to make professional connections, right? And then there’s something like a WordCamp or a meetup where that’s kind of more of a secondary goal. The primary goal typically… I mean, it depends person by person, but I feel the primary goal of an event like that is education and sharing the information with each other. And then the networking comes in hallway talks or in chat or on social media or whatever. And I think that as an underrepresented person who has attended these sorts of events prior to… Like your story, prior to being more involved in the community, I just showed up, not knowing anybody. And I was like, “All right, let’s see what’s going on.”
And it’s that feeling of intent, right? Of like “I’m here, why? To learn, to get hired, to network?” For me, that’s kind of the first step is what am I actually here to do? Are you here to network? Because maybe you’re not, maybe you’re in an environment where you will feel uncomfortable networking and it’s because it’s not the time or the place for you to be networking at the moment. I’m a little scatterbrained today. The other side of that, right? There’s the business card type of networking. And then there’s the networking where it almost feels like school, right, where it’s more just about making friends.
So you were saying you don’t want to be puppy dogging after people. I remember going to WordKit Miami, I want to say in 2017. And I saw Christi Sherenos, Josh Polik and I think Andrew Norkas sitting on the grass together, outside, hanging out and talking and having a good time and laughing. And I was like, “Man, I know who all those people are. I admire them. I would love to meet them and be friends with them.” I wasn’t even thinking about networking, business, blah, blah, blah. I would just love to meet them. But I was so intimidated by them, by the fact that they were already friends and already knew each other. And I didn’t know how to just go up to them and be like, “Hi, my name is Allie.” And have them be like, “Who cares? We’re talking.”
It put me right back in that almost high school mentality of like “I’m not good enough. I’m not cool enough. Why would they want to talk to me?” And yeah, I think that does boil down to what we talk about a lot on this podcast, which is imposter syndrome that affects a lot of underrepresented people. And I think that what you have to know is that you do have value to others, right? For you to go up to a group of people and introduce yourself and find that thing that you have in common, right? Because yeah, if I walk into a group of straight white men, at first glance, it doesn’t seem like we have a lot in common, but I know plenty of straight white men that I have successfully networked with and I can now call my friends or colleagues.

Michelle Frechette:
Yes.

Allie Nimmons:
Because we have so many other things in common other than what we look like or where we’ve come from.

Michelle Frechette:
Absolutely.

Allie Nimmons:
So yeah, I think that’s what I’m trying to get at is a lot of it is about intention. What do you actually want out this interaction? Being aware of the value that you offer and scrapping that high school mentality. Scrapping that mentality of… Because also, if I had… So the end of that story is I did not go up to Christi, Josh and Norkas. I am now good for friends with Christi and Josh. I have not met Norkas in person. I don’t think I could call him a friend, but we are friendly. And that happened naturally over time. And I do think that if I had gone up to them and said, “Hello,” they would’ve been super happy to meet me.

Michelle Frechette:
Absolutely.

Allie Nimmons:
I would’ve been worrying about nothing. And if they had not been super happy to meet me or rather, I should say, if they had been mean or rude or dismissive, those are not people I want to hang out with anyway.

Michelle Frechette:
Right.

Allie Nimmons:
You know what I mean? So worst case scenario, as far as networking as an underrepresented person, the people that you talk to do not respond, do not welcome you, make you feel excluded… And that is in a way a success because you have determined that great, I don’t have to waste my time on these people. I don’t have to waste my time trying to impress them or trying to connect with them just to learn later on down the road that they’re jerks.

Michelle Frechette:
Yep.

Allie Nimmons:
I already know that they’re jerks and a lot of that is easier said than done.

Michelle Frechette:
Absolutely. But there are some tips that we can offer to people to make it a little bit easier. So I’m sure you have some too, I’ve got a couple of my mind, so I’ll go first while you think of yours.

Allie Nimmons:
Okay.

Michelle Frechette:
Some of the things that have helped me, first of all, is just kind of that rip off the bandaid, step outside of my comfort zone, and just do it. And I know that’s not the same for everybody. And I know that some people can’t do that and that’s okay. But if you can, sit down next to somebody different. I usually look for a table where I don’t know people at the lunch hour. Obviously, that’s not going to help you for online networking, but where I don’t know people, and I’m just like, “Hey, can I sit here?” And I meet people and I grow my network and I grow…
And whether I remember those people later or not, whether we become friends or not, at least I’ve put myself into a different situation to be part of different conversations. Because I could talk to my friends anytime, but this lets me talk to people that I don’t know and learn more things about… Especially now that I represent different brands, right, like GiveWP, I can ask people, “Oh, have you ever used it? What do you think of it?” And I can get feedback. So at least I have a talking point with people.

Allie Nimmons:
Yeah.

Michelle Frechette:
And then the other thing is that if you are worried about knowing people, start following people that are speakers are known people in the industry on Twitter and start talking to them, right? For me, for example, my Twitter DMs are open. Anybody can message me. Trust me, like we talked before, I get the messages that are trying to catfish me or whatever, but I get messages from real people too, believe it or not. And like, “Hey, Michelle, I’m going to be at WordCamp Miami. I see you’re speaking. I would love to meet you.” And then I could say, “Hey, I’m going to be at the Gift table all day, pop over. I’d love to meet you too,” or “let’s grab lunch together” or whatever. And so I’ve done that with people before and said, “I would love to.”
So if you know somebody that seems friendly, they probably are friendly. And I think most people are friendly. There are some people who have anxiety themselves and appear to be bit larger than life, but really are introverts. So take this with a grain of salt kind of, but if somebody appears overly friendly, like me, on the web, you probably can DM them and say, “I would love to meet you. Would you have some time? I just want to introduce myself, shake your hand,” whatever. And I don’t mean to make it sound like I’m a celebrity, because I’m not. I’m a real person, but I’m a real person that’s willing to put myself out there and meet new people. And that’s just always super fun to be able to do those things too. So if you can follow along beforehand, look up some of the speakers, reach out to them, hang behind after a speaker’s done talking and kind of get in line to ask them a question, talk to them.
Oftentimes you could walk with them right to lunch or the happiness bar or wherever, which is another place. By the way, the happiness bar, you can talk to people. So I’m probably taking all your answers. So I’m going to let you go. But the point is, there’s lots of ways that you can introduce yourselves including online. So I mean, just kind of think about the fact that we have these online spaces, Zoom meetings and things, go ahead and attend. You don’t even have to say anything, just turn on your camera. It’s really hard for anybody to network with you when you don’t put on your camera.

Allie Nimmons:
Yeah.

Michelle Frechette:
I will say that. So put on your camera and probably somebody in the room will be like, “Hey, Allie, you haven’t said anything. What do you think about this?” And it’ll give you an opportunity to introduce yourself too. Okay, I’m done. It’s your turn.

Allie Nimmons:
Those are really, really good tips. Yeah. I’m like, “Oh gosh, what have you not said?” The two things that immediately come to mind bouncing off of what you said, as somebody who has spoken at events and helped organize events and volunteered at events, I love when there are people on social who are super interactive with the event. So people who take screenshots of slides and share them and tag the event or people who tweet out what they got from a talk or tweet directly at… I love being done with a talk and going on Twitter to see who’s tweeted at me while I was talking and what connected with people. And that has helped me to not only improve my talk, but connect with other people, right?
So it’s kind of something you can give as an attendee that you can then get back that connection and that… I don’t know, just make an impression in somebody’s mind of somebody who was super engaged. The other thing, and I think for me, one of the most powerful networking opportunities at WordPress events, which are difficult now that we’re purely virtual, but when things go back, all of the things that are more casual, right? So after parties, lunchtime, hallway talks. When people kind of… Not to say have their guard down because that sounds like we’re all super guarded while we’re doing talks. But when people are feeling a little bit more casual, a little bit more chatty.

Michelle Frechette:
More relaxed.

Allie Nimmons:
Yeah. More relaxed. Those are such great… I feel like going up to somebody at an after party and saying, “Hey, I really, really enjoyed your talk. I saw that you have an Australian Shepherd, you said that in your bio, I have an Australian Shepherd.” And starting a conversation about literally anything, right? And I can almost guarantee you that person, that speaker, will feel relieved that somebody has come up to talk to them. Because half the time, the speaker is getting over that overwhelming experience of having to give this big speech and maybe is scared to network themselves. And so it’s nice to have somebody else come up to them and bridge that gap.

Michelle Frechette:
I don’t know about you, but as a speaker, when nobody comes up to me and says anything about my talk, I feel like, “Oh, my gosh, I bombed. I must have bombed. It must have been so terrible.”

Allie Nimmons:
It’s a bummer. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette:
And when even one person is like, “Oh my gosh, I got so much out of this, that or the other,” I feel like, “Oh, yay. It was worth my time and energy and angst and anxiety and everything else to get up here and talk,” so definitely. I mean, praise will go so far.

Allie Nimmons:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. When you’ve worked very hard on a talk for a while that you’ve given for free, getting the praise from somebody who has watched it is definitely, definitely a worthwhile thing. And it is a perfect icebreaker, right? It’s appropriate to the event, but you can also branch off into other things like, “Okay, you gave a talk about CSS. I’m really interested in learning JavaScript. What do you know about…” Building off of that into other things that you’d like to talk about out, incredibly, incredibly helpful.

Michelle Frechette:
Absolutely.

Allie Nimmons:
I’m trying to think of a real world example but… Oh, one example I think we should leave people with, a great way to network, is to apply to be a speaker.

Michelle Frechette:
Oh, absolutely.

Allie Nimmons:
Because then you get in front of people, you get your name and your skills in front of people, your socials in front of people. And then you get people to talk to you afterward. My big break into the WordPress community was being a speaker ambassador for GoDaddy Pro. And I got that opportunity because Adam Warner saw me speak and came up to me afterward and started that conversation. If I had never gotten up to speak and put myself out there, I never would… Probably, I wouldn’t have met you. I never would’ve worked that Give, it caused this whole snowball thing that came from networking with one person, so.

Michelle Frechette:
Yeah, I don’t know that people know this or don’t know this, but I got my job at Give… I started almost four years ago at Give because I met two of the founders at WordCamp Pittsburgh, saw them the next year at WordCamp Ottawa and said, “By the way, if you’re ever hiring, yours is the company that I would consider closing my shop for.” And three months later, I was fully employed with GiveWP.

Allie Nimmons:
That is awesome.

Michelle Frechette:
So networking works. Absolutely.

Allie Nimmons:
It definitely does. Definitely does. And I’d say if it’s something that scares you, practice. The best thing that you could do to get better at it is practice in little ways. And it does go back to that kind of how to make friends, kindergarten thing. Go up to somebody and start a conversation, tell them you like their shoes. You would be surprised how much people respond to just a simple little-

Michelle Frechette:
[inaudible 00:19:00] earrings.

Allie Nimmons:
Yeah. Something like that. Have a selfie contest at WordCamp, you’ll meet tons of people.

Michelle Frechette:
Exactly. And there’s something to be said for… If you really are nervous, if you really are introverted and the anxiety of doing that, take a friend with you, right? So I brought my daughter to WordCamp before I was really into WordCamps.

Allie Nimmons:
Oh, wow.

Michelle Frechette:
And she doesn’t do WordPress. She’s like, “Yeah, I’ll go with you, mom. It’s a fun experience. We’re going to Toronto.” And we had a weekend away. It was fun. We didn’t even go to the after party. We had champagne in our room and just hung out as mother, daughter.

Allie Nimmons:
That’s cute.

Michelle Frechette:
She does not have any anxieties about meeting people at all. At least she saw that part of me instead of the inner part of me. And so she would just walk up to people and be like, “Hey, do you know my mom?” So she got me out of my shell a little bit at the beginning. And now of course I’m not afraid of anything really, or anybody.

Allie Nimmons:
That reminds me so much… And I almost blurted it out and said it, and I realized it wouldn’t make sense. Did you ever watch How I Met Your Mother?

Michelle Frechette:
Yes. Yes.

Allie Nimmons:
Do you remember when Barney would go up to girls in a bar and he would just go, “Hi, have he met Ted” and then walk away and Ted would be left there in front of this girl? Like, “Hi, I’m Ted.”

Michelle Frechette:
Yes. Yes.

Allie Nimmons:
It reminds me of that exact… It is almost like dating where you have to just go up to somebody and break the ice and see what’s going to happen. And to you talking too of bringing somebody with you, if you get invited to something or maybe you go to a meetup or a WordCamp or something and you know one person and that person is more active in the community. Going back to being intentional, if you tell that person, “Hey, I’m looking for a job or I’m looking for more connections. Can you…” I’m sure that person would be more than happy to… I would love to go back to a WordCamp and have a friend of mine who wants to get into WordPress. Oh, my gosh, I would be so obnoxious. I would bring them to every single person that I know and introduce them.

Michelle Frechette:
Same.

Allie Nimmons:
You’ll find so many ambassadors and friend makers within this community. People are so eager to bring… We are kind of culty in that way. We really want to bring other people in.

Michelle Frechette:
Yeah.

Allie Nimmons:
So yeah, be intentional-

Michelle Frechette:
But we let you leave too.

Allie Nimmons:
Yes. We will let you leave if you want to. But yeah, be intentional. Let people know like, “Hey, I’m new to the community. I’m looking to meet people who are into X, Y, and Z, or who are working on this, that and the other thing,” and I’m certain that somebody will say, “Oh, well, yeah, I know this person.” And it’s this whole net of people that you will be able to connect with.

Michelle Frechette:
Exactly.

Allie Nimmons:
Yeah.

Michelle Frechette:
So go to WordCamps, go to events, meet people at the very least you can reach out to us. We’d always be happy to talk to you.

Allie Nimmons:
Go to WordCamp US, it’s tomorrow.

Michelle Frechette:
Tomorrow. Awesome. And on that, we will let you go. We’ll see you next week and happy networking.

Allie Nimmons:
Bye.

Michelle Frechette:
Bye.

Allie Nimmons:
This episode was sponsored by the following companies. Ninja Forms. Ninja Forms is WordPress form building simplified. Build beautiful user friendly forms that will make you feel like a professional web developer, no code required. If you’re interested in sponsoring an episode using our database, or just want to say “Hi,” go to underrepresentedintech.com. See you next week.